Leigh Herbert, a carpenter has become part of the folklore not because of his extraordinary wood carving skills but for the £5 bet he placed while on a camping holiday last August. It’s probably safe to say that it’s the greatest £5 investment anyone ever made considering that he will be taking home £25,000. Over the 9 months he witnessed his tiny £5 turn into a full grown payout. In other words Eden Hazard’s curling shot into the top corner is Leigh Herbert’s money shot!
Twice as unlikely as Piers Morgan becoming Arsenal manager, 2.5 times unlikelier than Kim Kardashian running for US presidency and 10 times unlikelier than discovering Loch Ness monster is what book makers at Paddy Power believed were the chances of Leicester winning the English Premier League ! Considering that we are talking about a club that had not managed to win the league in their 132 years history, 1-5000 odds doesn’t seem that fucked up.
Anyone who follows football leagues knows that early in the season the standings generally represent the transient and not a great indicator of what it looks at the end of the season. English Premier League (EPL) is a twenty team affair where every team fights hard to be as higher up in the table as possible. Being the most followed football league in the world, EPL generally offers diverse playing styles, not-so-rare upsets and individuals with great stories. EPL also happens to be the most followed football league in India and in general Asia. Though I personally support FC Barcelona, I watch far more EPL matches than La Liga matches in a season for various reasons.
Big teams can have a awful patch early on, minnows might have a purple patch early on but as the season progresses one can say with confidence as to which teams have a realistic chance at winning the league. When the defending champions Chelsea started on a horrendous note this season, many expected it to be a perturbation which will die out soon but even the ardent fans knew that they were amidst their worst season in ages when their team had just 3 wins from 12 matches, which eventually even lead to firing of their manager and soulmate Jose Mourinho, probably the only event in football which deserves to have worse than 1-5000 odds !
Generally I don’t follow teams like Crystal Palace or Leicester closely hence I have very little info about their style of play which makes it easier for me to believe that their presence near the top is just a transient. About two months into the season even if you wanted to give a fuck about Crystal Palace or Leicester’s performance you would have failed to do so due to the overwhelming amount of discussion everywhere about what was happening with Chelsea managed by their talismanic, larger than life manager Jose Mourinho. But it didn’t take much time for the world to come to the conclusion that Chelsea were amidst a shit season and it took a bit more time for their Russian billionaire owner Roman Abramovich to realise the same, though pinning the blame entirely on Mourinho seemed stupid. Managers being made as the scape goat when things go wrong is a commonplace thing in football.
Generally by Christmas break (almost midway, 17/38) one at least has a good idea as to who are the front runners. If the table in October looked as though a strong wind had shuffled the order a bit the table during the Christmas break looked as though it was hit by a shit storm, more so for Chelsea. I must admit that even though Leicester City was at the top, I found myself more amused at seeing Chelsea at 15th position and sometimes even had wet dreams about Chelsea being relegated or more dramatically put “Defending champions relegated !”. Not just Crystal Palace hung on, Leicester topped the table and one couldn’t ignore the rise of Watford !
Post Mourinho, Chelsea’s slide towards the bottom was replaced by a slow crawl towards the top, more like towards the middle so I stopped obsessing with Chelsea’s fortune/misfortune. When a team is generally having an incredible run it’s not surprising to find bunch of players having a dream season. One of the key players responsible for the fine run was Jamie Vardy. I took notice of him when I heard/read that he is set to break Manchester United legend, Ruud van Nistelrooy’s record of scoring goals in 10 consecutive league matches. Jamie Vardy broke the record much before the Christmas break and that led me to pay bit more attention to the Leicester team overall.
Leicester weren’t a regular mid table team that was having a far above average season but they were survivors of what had looked like an inevitable relegation from the first division just a season ago. Faced with an almost inevitable relegation Leicester City bounced back under their manager Nigel Pearson in a spectacular fashion by winning 7 out of their last 9 matches, drawing one and losing one. Nigel Pearson even went on to win manager of the month for the month of April.
Though Leicester won the relegation battle in some style, the infamous sextape involving three Leicester players, including Nigel Pearson’s son proved too costly for Nigel Pearson and he eventually had to exit after an almost fairy tale ending to the season. At this point in time I don’t think anyone on the planet thought this incredible survival story will be dwarfed by a story of pure dominance in the near future!
Enter Claudio Ranieri, a veteran manager in every sense of the word. His managing career had started well before I was even born and he had managed a string of top clubs across various top European leagues.
Sadly for Ranieri apart from finishing as runners up with Chelsea during Arsenal’s famous invincible season and finishing second once with Juventus and few league wins in second division leagues nothing much had happened during his career. Before he took the job at Leicester he had been fired as Greece national team manager after losing at home to Faroe Fucking Islands in the Euro qualifiers, not something any manager wants to have on his resume!
The entire Leicester squad costed mere £54.4 million to assemble, with the most expensive player costing £10 million (Leonardo Ulloa), to put it in perspective, Manchester City, one of the title contenders had a squad costing £418.8 million. Not that I have anything against rich teams ( I support FC Barcelona, which has individuals more expensive than the entire Leicester squad!) but I am sane enough to acknowledge how hard it is for inexpensive squads to take on the big dogs. Having an inexpensive squad is almost a prerequisite for a football fairy tale.
Leicester team was much more than a collection of inexpensive players, they had a fucking awesome defense with some amazing physical presence in the form of the captain Wes Morgan and his partner in crime Robert Huth supported by Danny Simpson and Christian Fuchs. These were the kind of players who functioned within their limits but with incredibly low error rate. N’Golo Kanté with his incredible number of tackles (around 150) was one of their key players. Their striker Jamie Vardy before joining Leicester was playing for a English third division club called Fleetwood Town ! Jamie Vardy who was bough for £1 million had his transfer price surge to upwards of 18 million by January transfer window. With 22 goals and 6 assists his performance was something extremely crucial for Leicester’s fine run. The only Leicester player whose performance was even better than Vardy’s was Riyad Mahrez. Mahrez an incredible midfielder with his pinpoint passes at the front and incredible chemistry with Jamie Vardy caused nightmares to opposition defenders. Mahrez was bought from a French second division club called Le Havre AC for less than half a million pounds! For an incredible season where he scored 17 goals and assisted 11 goals, Mahrez was very rightly named as the PFA player of the season. Pretty much every club with big wallet probably wants to buy Mahrez for a price well above Leicester squad price!
By Valentine’s day the table had undergone some surgery again, Tottenham had assumed the role of chasing Leicester. Tottenham unlike Leicester is club with a decent number of trophies in their cabinet amassed over the period of 133 years but had never managed to win the relatively new EPL. Forget about winning EPL, they had never even managed to finish above their London rivals, Arsenal. Tottenham’s run in itself is an incredible story, only to be seriously overshadowed by Leicester’s !
By now every neutral fan wanted to witness the miracle of Leicester winning. Life is too short to witness sporting achievements that are this rare! Arsenal’s 2003-2004 invincible season where they went without losing a single game in EPL was incredible but then again in the neighbouring Italian league Juventus achieved the same thing recently. Fairy tales are supposed to end on a very high note no matter what happens in between. With Leicester the only ending that would qualify their run as a fairy tale is if they win the league, second place would be seen as a tragedy though logically thinking Leicester finishing anywhere in top 4 should be an awesome achievement by itself. By Valentine’s day the footballing world was all in love with Leicester and they all wanted nothing but the perfect ending to the season. Leicester’s dream was incredibly contagious, all football fans except the ones whose clubs still had some chance of winning the title endorsed Leicester’s dream and I was one of them. To be honest being a football fan in India, following EPL on TV , what I endorsed was a mediocre version, a knockoff of the original dream only the thousands of devout Leicester fans who went to stadiums and watched them week in, week out could dream of !
With every Leicester win , the joy grew two fold only to be rivaled by the rise in impatience with every Spurs win. Spurs were playing delightful, aesthetically pleasing brand of attacking football with a rock solid defence. Even when I knew that only Spurs had a realistic chance of spoiling the dream, it was still hard not to like their game ! It’s a pity that Tottenham’s incredible run couldn’t have been timed any worse, any other season I would have happily cheered for them but this season in my mind had to be Leicester’s ! When Leicester met West Ham, we all wanted nothing less than a win. Leicester took the lead with an awesome finish by Vardy and when everything seemed to be going Leicester’s way Vardy received second yellow for simulation and was sent off and eventually had to miss two more matches! To add more salt to the wound West Ham not just equalized but took the lead through Aaron Cresswell’s screamer ! An injury time penalty helped Leicester secure a point. Leicester came back strong in the very next match against Swansea with a 4-0 win in the absence of their talismanic striker Vardy and Tottenham lost more ground when they drew against West Brom. With 3 games left in the season and with 7 point lead, all Leicester needed was just 3 points (1 win = 3 points = 3 draws) to take an unassailable lead over Tottenham but the 3 fixtures were very tricky ones, United at Old Trafford , Everton at home and Chelsea at Stanford Bridge !
A win against United would have won the league and what better place to win than at a stadium nicknamed “Theater of dreams”. When Anthony Martial, a player who made his debut under Ranieri (at Monaco) scored, everyone woke up from their dream but soon went back to dreaming when Wes Morgan equalized. But there was a Plan B, a second way of sealing the league victory the very same week, anything less than a win for Tottenham at Stanford Bridge was game over for Tottenham ! So Plan B was essentially to hope for a good show from Chelsea against Spurs.
Spurs who had not won in ages against Chelsea at Chelsea home(Stanford Bridge) had to break few long standing records just to keep their hopes of winning the league alive. One couldn’t think of a better season to break an uncomfortable record, Tottenham were playing brilliantly while Chelsea were just recuperating from a shit storm but people like me wanted to believe that Stanford Bridge was shit storm proof at least for one monday night ! Chelsea who have nothing but excellent individual talents had trouble playing up to their potential whole season. For about 30 minutes neither team couldn’t score, 0-0 was good enough for Leicester and probably for 99.9% football fans (0.1% being Spurs fans!) to go nuts ! Harry Kane scored one at 35th minute and to shatter all hopes even further Spurs scored a second through Son Heung-Min at 44th minute! Watching a 12:30 AM match in India is not something I enjoy but it’s almost inevitable since there are way too many good matches in that time slot (Ex: All UEFA Champions League matches). At half time with score being 0-2, I thought of going to bed but if Chelsea do make a comeback I won’t be just missing good 45 minutes of football but also the chance to witness the moment when Leicester dream comes true, so I decided to watch the second half. Chelsea started more positively, they had substituted Pedro with Hazard. Hazard when he is at his best is one of the most creative player you can see on a football pitch (very much like Iniesta) but for a man who had won PFA player of the year last season, he has had pretty much a season to forget. Chelsea scored one, thanks to a good goal from Gary Cahill from a corner. Suddenly Tottenham felt the match was far far from over and indeed it was! At 83 minute Hazard dribbled past couple of defenders and passed the ball to Diego Costa and curled the pass from Costa to the top fucking corner to score a spectacular goal. Not many goals are worthy of being the final step at overcoming 1-5000 odds, this one from Hazard was up there with the best. Pretty match every tackle in the game had the potential to turn into a fight, Tottenham received 11 fucking yellow cards with no player receiving two (what are the odds?) !! After a frantic 15 minutes the score managed to remain unchanged fulfilling Leicester and millions of football fans’ dream !
The feeling now is more of relief than that of a joy. But this blog is just the beginning of numerous conversations I am going to have in future. To be at the top of the table after 38 insane matches in 9 months is not a joke and to have done it with one of the smallest squads leaves me with no words but with insane amount of appreciation and respect.
p.s. This blog was not meant to provide an analysis or a plethora of stats but just a testimony to the fact that I had the pleasure of following one of the greatest events in sports to have ever happened !
[Edit] This is Paddy Power’s response to Leicester’s new owner’s interview back in 2014 when he expressed his desire to be in top 5 in about 3 years !
References:
- http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/leicester-fan-who-placed-50001-title-bet-turns-down-cash-out-offer-of-3200-a6860766.html
- https://www.whoscored.com/
- http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/premier-league/2014-2015/table
- http://www.eurosport.co.uk
- https://en.wikipedia.org/
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36138413/10-things-bookies-thought-more-likely-than-leicester-winning-the-premier-league
CK91 
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